


palms

by lizardcookie



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Mutual Pining, also some snape dynamics there but he never actually shows in the fic so im not tagging him, sitting in divination class from third year onwards for some wonderful things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-07
Updated: 2019-09-07
Packaged: 2020-10-12 03:21:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20557382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lizardcookie/pseuds/lizardcookie
Summary: Lily Evans doesn't much care for the way her future is read, especially considering it always seems to be James Potter telling her something dire. The fact that James Potter seems to have nice hands that make palm reading rather distracting is unrelated to the reasons why Lily Evans does not care much for the divining magics.





	palms

“I just don’t see why you’ve got to be so mean to him!” Lily whispered fiercely, flipping through the book pages that Professor Gudgeon instructed them to look at for reference. Well, that’s what she hoped Professor Gudgeon thought she was doing, because what she was actually doing was trying to get to the bottom of a very annoying problem she’s had of late. 

That problem being James Potter. 

She didn’t intend on sitting next to him in the stuffy tower, but she rolled into class almost _ late _because Severus had held her back at breakfast, telling her that Potter and Black were already back at it on the first night of term. And as her luck played out, the only cushion left gave her the perfect opportunity to figure out how to salvage two friendships and restore some level of peace to the hallways. 

“Mean?” Potter had the nerve to sound offended. “I’m no meaner than him! Snivellus is a bad kid, Evans. Why are you still taking his side?”

“He’s my _ friend _is what he is,” Lily hissed back. “And you’ve never given him a chance.”

Potter just shook his head in dismissal. “Your friend’s a creep. He was stalking us last night. I was well within my right to defend us.”

“Stalking you? That’s not what he said happened.”

“He’s got no reason to be honest when you’re lapping up his lies from the palm of his hand,” he said, sparing her no short amount of disdain in his voice. Lily thought about hitting him with her book in return before she remembered she wanted this conversation to go somewhere. “He got what he deserved, following Remus around like that.”

“Why Remus?” Lily heard herself ask. Potter stilled, his eyes darting to hers quickly and then away again before he pretended to busy himself by opening his textbook.

“Doesn’t matter. Tell your _ friend _to learn how to keep his greasy nose in his own business.”

Lily opened her mouth to retort, but was interrupted.

“I hear too much talking and not enough connecting to the auras!” Gudgeon proclaimed, letting his voice waver dramatically. Lily did catch the pointed look in their direction, though, and decided not to test whether Gudgeon’s attachment to school rules was stronger than his attachment to the next dimension. Potter actually seemed relieved at the chance to get back to classwork.

“Forget about Snape. Can we just get started, please?”

“Fine,” she conceded, extending her arm across the table for him to read. “But this isn’t over, Potter.”

“Course it isn’t,” he muttered, but otherwise let it drop. That was when he decided to redirect his attention to the task at hand, literally, and starting running his thumbs along the lines of her palm.

Something odd happened just then. It occurred to Lily that James Potter had rather nice looking hands. 

“Hold still, Evans, quit jerking your hand around like that,” Potter mumbled, gripping her palm tighter in response to her fidgeting. “I’m trying to see why your lifeline is so short.”

“Short?” She repeated, curious. She pulled her hand out of his grasp, holding it up to her own face. Looking between her own palm and the textbook example, it _ did _seem short. “Lemme see your’s,” Lily said, making a grab for his hand, and when he pulled it out of her reach, she made an even more fervent attempt to grab it.

“Ah!” Potter cried, “Don’t manhandle me, woman! This hand has Quidditch tryouts this week!”

Lily resisted the urge to roll her eyes, but must not have tried too hard, because they rolled anyway. “Calm down, I just want to see yours so I can compare.”

Potter eyed her suspiciously before slowly extending his arm out to her. “_ Careful, _Evans,” he said loftily. “These hands are my one-way ticket to the professionals.”

“I’m trying to _ read _your future, not sabotage it.”

He obliged, extending his hand out for her with a small warning in his eyes. Running her hands along his palms, fingers tracing the lines in his skin, Lily heard Potter cough a bit next to her. Then she held up her palm right beside his, a direct comparison. Her hands were smaller than his big tan ones, but the patterns were there for her to read.

“Your’s doesn’t look much different from mine,” she said thoughtfully. “And the love lines look the same, too,” she noted, eyes skipping between the unlikely pair of hands and their book. “That’s odd.”

“Yeah,” Potter said, not exactly looking at her directly as he pulled his hand away. “It’s likely all codswallop, anyway.”

“Yeah,” Lily repeated, but something in her pulled at the thought, something that begged to know more about those short life lines, to know more about the identical love line patterns. She shook her head. It’s the first day of class. There’s more to be learned than the trivial fact that Potter’s hands seem like a nice pair, for whatever that was worth. 

“Anyway,” Lily turned over the next page of her book, looking over at Potter in the corner of her eye. “Gobstones tournament tonight? I’ve got a title to defend.”

His face lit up. “You’re _ on. _” 

_______

“I see you’re still showing off with that Snitch in your pocket at every chance,” Lily huffed, taking her usual cushion in the Tower next to him. He didn’t seem to be in his usual spirits, though, because when he pocketed the offending object, he merely gruffed something roughly back at her. 

“And I see you’re still hanging out with Slytherins, Evans, so I think you really need to reevaluate which one of us has a worse habit.”

“If we’re going to talk _ habit, _then,” Lily said bitingly, “Maybe we can talk about the rather unfortunate habit the two of you have gotten into where you’re serving detention together every other week because you’re obsessed with one-upping each other!”

“_ I’m _ not the one with an obsession.” His eyes were still narrowed over at her in judgement. “When he’s not trailing after you like some sad, lost, ugly dog then he’s trailing after _ my _mates trying to cause trouble.”

“There you go again, blaming him! Don’t pretend like you aren’t the instigator!”

“And don’t pretend he’s some saint while you’re making me out to be some devil!” Lily thought that was real anger there, but then he just shook his head, swirling his tea cup around like the directions on the board instructed. “I don’t know what sort of pity keeps you going back to him.”

“Pity?” Lily heard her voice rise in register before she caught herself, swiveling her head around to make sure that Gudgeon hadn’t noticed their conversation. He hadn’t. He was too busy warning Black and Pettigrew of some future betrayal that was spelled out in their tea leaves. “Loyalty isn’t pity, Potter. He’s my friend and you haven’t made his time here easy. You always manage to just bring out the worst in him.”

Potter drank the divining tea, his face scrunching is displeasure, before he muttered bitterly, “Snape doesn’t need my help bringing out his worst.” 

Lily swirled her tea cup, preparing herself for the bitter brew she was about to have to down. It was a good distraction. She didn’t want to say that maybe James Potter had a point, since she was finding it harder and harder to justify in her heart why Severus liked to hang around with Mulciber and Avery as much as he did. She didn’t like the way he’d been acting lately, either, but she wanted to believe that if she could stop Potter and Black from harassing him in public then maybe he’d see that there are more friends to be made at school than those who seem to be supporting You-Know-Who. 

But there was a part of her that thought that maybe Severus was hanging out with them because he mostly agreed with them. He only dared to hint at his opinions about the war in front of her, even when she prodded. It was impossible he could think You-Know-Who was a good thing for wizarding society, considering he was her best friend. She knew he wasn’t exactly _ fond _of Muggles… but...

Lily downed her tea. She hoped the resulting foul grimace hid how upset she was. 

“I hate talking about Snivellus,” Potter told her. He was staring at her, almost like he could see right through her. Another impossible thing. He continued, “All it manages to do is rile you up. And this might surprise you to hear, but I don’t always like upsetting you anytime I open my mouth.”

Now, that _ also _ sounded like an impossible thing. She didn’t get to respond, because the next moment, he reached across the little stool they were situated at and picked up her teacup, examining the dredges with his brow furrowed as he worked to read through the imagery. 

“Your tea leaves are abysmal,” he looked up, hitting her with a vaguely amused look. “What on earth are you planning to _ do _that’s going to kill you so quick?”

Not really shocked at his reaction, Lily grabbed her cup from his hands then held up his up as well, showing him an identical image in his leaves. “No worse than yours.”

“Well, bugger,” Potter said, but he didn’t seem too bothered by it. “Nothing to do about that, I guess.” Now he really looked amused. “Want to read my love line again instead?”

She pulled another grimaced. “Absolutely not.”

“Well, _ bugger.” _

_______

A shiny prefect’s badge sits on her robes, much like the shiny captain’s badge adorns his. Both equally proud of their accomplishments, both equally proud in general. And pride makes for stubborn hearts.

Lily Evans doesn’t think about her heart, though, especially not in relation to James Potter. Especially not when she had to hand over her hand again for O.W.L. review and he turned it over repeatedly and stoically in his nice looking hands, calloused fingers running along her soft palm. She thought he’d make a joke of it-- as he had been doing for the blasted entirety of this year-- but he seemed to be actually reviewing the reference image in the book, carefully following the lines in her hand.

“Merlin, Evans,” he started, looking up at her for the first time in a while, “I’ve got to say. I’ve looked at Pete’s hand and Remus’ and Sirius’ and none of their’s seem quite as dire as yours. Not _ great, _but not so short, either.” 

“Har, har,” Lily acknowledhed sardonically, flipping through some pages in one book and then another, trying to ignore his words, the touch of his hands. “_ Palms. _ O.W.L.’s review my arse, this is _ remedial. _ We should be charting stars again. Anything but _ palms.” _

“Palms aren’t so bad,” Potter tutted, calling her attention back to him. “See, I found something new.”

“New?” That piqued her interest. “What do you mean, new?”

He was holding her palm up closer to his eyes before suddenly he wasn’t just examining her palm, suddenly he was holding her _ hand _ , fingers laced together. An impish smirk pulled up at his lips, his eyebrows raised in apparent amusement at his victory. “Well, I’ve just discovered that it seems your hand fits perfectly in mine. Funny it isn’t there all the time, now, isn’t it? Especially when I _ swear _our love lines look perfectly alike.”

He had her frozen in shock for only a moment. It was a moment too long— a moment for him to see her gaping up at him like a fish, a moment for her to feel that familiar flutter in her stomach. 

“You know what _ I _ see?” Lily said, taking on that tone that made him picture her up high on a hippogriff. She had this whole year to perfect pushing down the weird, inconvenient flutters in her stomach when he flirted like that. While most of her wanted to deck him for it, some treacherous part found it almost amusing. Found it almost enjoyable. She knew he fancied her-- Mary told her, Remus told her, even _ Severus _found it in him to acknowledge. And though Potter may be doing a shite job at flirting with her, it was (and she’d never admit this aloud, of course), somewhat flattering to be liked like that. 

This was just a small part of her, though, and she found that part easy to quell when she remembered that last week he and Black convinced Peeves to hang a couple of third years from the light sconces in the Entrance Hall just for the hell of it. She’d just fought with Severus over Mulciber and Avery last night. Potter is in no way evil, but she won’t stand for any sort of cruelty.

She twisted her wrist, the one attached to the hand that he had captured, and succeeded in twisting his around painfully as well. “I see an arrogant, bullying rich kid who thinks he’s got a right to do and say whatever his fancy. Is that right?” She added some new force to the twist. 

“Ah, watch it, Evans!” Potter broke his hand free of her’s, shaking out his wrist with a well-earned glare at her. “We’ve the final coming up! What would the rest of the house say if they knew it was you who’d damaged my best asset?”

“They’d probably say you _ deserved _it, you pigheaded oaf.” 

“Who’re you calling oaf? I’ll have you know my coordination, looks, and intelligence all seem to be perfectly acceptable to most everyone else here but _ you _.” 

“Then go show off for everyone else,” she seethed, “But _not _for me, not when we both know you’re being absolutely insufferable for absolutely no reason other than your own entertainment.”

“Alright, _ alright _,” Potter bit out as he held his hands up in surrender, but Lily wasn’t finished with him yet.

“And would you stop joking around like that?” Lily asked, suddenly sounding serious, because she was. She was as serious as the images printed on the front of _ The Daily Prophet _ and as serious as the essays against Muggleborns found in its editorials. Her eyes are sharp as glass when they pierce into his. “Every single time you read my tea leaves or my stupid palm you’re always predicting my death. It’s _ not _funny.”

Then something odd happened. Instead of cracking a joke about how it’s not his fault nor his business regarding how she’s going to end up dead, he just sat up straighter in his cushion, pushing his glasses up to sit more properly on his nose. 

“I don’t think it’s funny,” Potter blinked, speaking quickly to get his point across. The anger which had whipped up so fiercely in her died to embers as he continued. “Really, Lily, I’m not trying to be funny. I shouldn’t have played it light like that.” Potter gave a brief pause, during which Lily stared blankly back at him while he opened and closed his mouth, as if torn about what to do or say next. He held up his palm to her. “Look. Mine’s no different. I just figured I’d die tragically, being the hero somewhere. Or a Quidditch accident. _ Merlin, _I hope it’s a bludger that takes me out first.” He sounded genuine. He sounded distressed. Those were two things she didn’t often hear from Potter. Those, and the quiet, soft way he said, “I don’t want the same thing to happen to you. I mean it.”

Lily stared at James Potter, trying to figure him out. Trying to figure out why she was taking out her annoyance at him and why he was letting her.

But he didn’t know that she knew. He didn’t know that she knew that Severus did what he’d threatened to do, that she’d figured everything out on her own from patrols this year. He didn’t know that Remus told her what happened last week, that James Potter had run down the tunnel by the Whomping Willow and had grabbed Severus as he opened the door to the Shack and saw everything. He didn’t know she knew he’d saved his nemesis and that she thought it was not entirely all about saving Remus’ future, which is how Severus framed it when she confronted him about it. But Lily Evans knew James Potter well enough to know that saving Severus was about that. Saving a life. He didn’t know Remus told her they were all fighting about it but he wouldn’t say much more beyond that. Maybe that’s why James Potter looked a little strained if she decided to see past his usually cavalier facade. 

“I believe you,” was what Lily Evans said softly back to him. Because she did. James Potter was a lot of things, the first of which was a good person beneath his bravado. His cheeks looked a little brighter than usual. She wondered if hers did, too. “Thank you.”

“For the bare minimum of decency?” He just shook his head in general disgust at the state of things if Lily Evans is surprised to find someone who does not want her to die. He found it hard to look her in the eye just then. “Forget palms. We’ve only two more weeks of this bloody class. Let’s just make up some crystal ball predictions ‘til Gudgeon finally says we can go to lunch.”

“Alright,” he heard back. But they don’t make up predictions, they just sit in silence for the rest of class, silence he wished he knew how to break, but James Potter finds himself stumbling more often than not in front of Lily Evans, so he let it be.

______

“Alright, Evans,” James declared, taking his usual cushion right beside her. “This is it. This is when we figure it out.”

“Is it?” Lily asked in a slightly bored voice, holding up ignited wand tip to a pile of dried herbs in front of her, watching the embers take hold. “I was just thinking about abandoning the whole thing and deciding to finally calling Divination what it is-- crap.”

“Well, we can also do that,” he ceded. “But first we’re going to get some answers.”

James Potter reached down into his bag with hands gloved against the icy chill of the North Tower and pulled out book after book, setting two piles in front of him. Lily Evans watched in confused silence as the piles grew, wondering what on earth James had concocted up in that head of his. Once his bag was empty, he turned towards her, grinning.

“This one,” he pointed to the pile nearest him, “has all the texts supporting Divination being, as both you and my dear mother put it, crap. This one,” he pointed at the one closer to her, which was significantly smaller, “has all the books I could find with witches and warlocks supporting it, even for non-Seer’s.” 

“James,” Lily started. “We got back _ yesterday. _Don’t tell me you spent your first night back in the castle in the Library.”

“Have some respect for me,” he denied with dignity, but it was marred by his next words, “Pulled most of these from the library at home and packed ‘em with me.”

Her eyebrow quipped up in bemusement. “Did you spend your holiday reading?”

“Sirius was visiting his uncle for some of it,” he shrugged, casually, “Peter went abroad with his mother, Remus refused to visit because he knew I just wanted to fly our brooms out over the highway, and your house isn’t connected to the Floo Network. I had to spend my time _ somehow." _

Lily Evans didn’t think about how James Potter wanted to see her over break (didn’t think about the moments she’d entertained the idea of visiting him over break, either) and didn’t think about how he spent his time reading up on something that seemed to be bothering her more than it bothered him. She didn’t think about that, because those were thoughts that might lead to more complications in their new friendship that she might not like, because she found that she liked this friendship very much now that Snape wasn’t making her feel guilty for it and now that James stopped hexing classmates in the corridor for fun. 

Her herbs had started to burn, smoke rising and twirling and twisting itself together in the air. James’ eyes followed the smoke in stoic silence before she found a teacup on a nearby stool to trap it. She didn’t want to read smoke. She wanted to know what he knew, and his eyes were bright behind his glasses when he finally meets her gaze after following the last of the incense retreat up into the rafters. 

“What’s the verdict?” Lily heard herself ask. 

“The verdict,” James said carefully, “is that it’s not for us to know until afterwards.” He pointed to the pile in front of him. “Act on what you read or predict, and you set it in motion. So all prophecies are just simply self-fulfilling, not bound by fate. Don’t act and you don’t,” his hand moves to the one setting right in front of her crossed knees, “But then something else sets it in motion, or it is your very inaction which activates the future, if it’s genuine.”

“So there’s not really an answer.”

“Well, the answer is that it _ could _be all crap.”

“I want it to be,” she muttered petulantly. Longingly, thinking about her love line and all that it implies. Earnestly, thinking about her life line and all that it implies.

But next to her, James just shrugged. “Maybe it just isn’t for us to know.”

“And doesn’t that bother you?”

Again, he gave one of his increasingly maddeningly casual shrugs, but the way he was looking at her didn’t feel very casual at all. His eyes still looked very bright, like they themselves held secrets of the future she wanted to discover. But he was still very casual when he said, “I think I’ve just come to realize that I don’t know a lot about a lot of things.”

She didn’t have a response and it must have been that he didn’t expect one, because he took a handful of herbs from the jar in the middle of the little table and plopped the pile in front of him, igniting it with his wand tip to summon the divining smoke. She pulled the teacup off her pile of herbs, finding the embers below still burning, and it does not take more than a moment for the two thin pillars of smoke to start to billow and dance together in sync, twirling up in the air, rising and rising and rising up in silence. 

Lily Evans did her homework. She knew what that meant. And considering James just spent holidays reading book after book on spell work, palms, tea leaves, and the like, she knew he knew what it meant, too. But then again, maybe it means absolutely nothing at all.

Neither of them say anything. James noted something in their assignment for Gudgeon and just watched the smoke tell their future in front of them. Lily followed suit and after a while, they’ve both filled enough parchment space to roll up and turn in, free to leave.

James opened the circle hatch for her, watching her climb carefully down the ladder. When she was clear, he followed, only to jump down once he knew he wouldn’t break his leg with the fall. When she led their way to lunch, he followed obediently.

“If Divination’s crap,” James started, the first one to speak in a while, “Why are you still taking it? You could have dropped it. And we’ve both got Arithmancy next, which makes a lot more sense.”

“Yes, well,” Lily paused, and if she weren’t so sure it was impossible to feel embarrassment in front of James Potter, maybe she would have been able to acknowledge the blush on her cheeks. But she was stuck, because one thing she did know was that he always had a way of seeing right through her lies.

“Maybe I just want answers,” she confessed honestly. “And you? Your mates all dropped this year. Why are you the hold out?”

He looked serious, too. Contemplative, maybe, walking with her step for step. “Maybe I want the same thing.”

_____

James Potter was shaking his head, but not in disappointment. Just disbelief. Beautiful, admirable, stunned disbelief.

He was also laughing, which had something to do with the shaking of his head.

“It’s not _ funny,” _ Lily scolded, but the effect was lost when she laughed, too, a bit more wild sounding than his amused one. “It’s not funny and I _ punched _ Avery and it _ hurts _and please, please, please don’t make me go to Madame Pomfrey about this.”

“Alright, Evans, alright!” He laughed again, because she had actually grabbed a handful of his robe and shook his arm back and forth in desperation with her non-injured hand. “Patience, please, I’m getting us there.” 

‘There’ being the first available empty classroom on the third floor, which is where she had quite literally run into him soon as she had run _ away _from Avery. Avery and his broken nose. Which she had broken. With her hand. Which now also felt broken. 

(James, for his part, had been on his way to the Kitchens with Sirius when Sirius pointed out her name on the third floor with Avery on her tail. He left Sirius but took the Map, taking a shortcut through a false portrait to wrap right around the corner to find Lily Evans, not cursed and looking only slightly panicked rather than injured, clutching her hand to her chest. The fight he felt coursing in his veins before finding her faded out of him as soon as she grabbed him, walking them away with a brisk pace, checking over her shoulder in no subtle way. Once it was clear she was okay, it became a bit amusing, witnessing a Lily Evans who had clearly just broken a few school codes she wasn’t proud of.)

James pulled her into the Charms classroom after confirming it was empty on the Map. Filch must be yelling at Peeves somewhere in the Dungeons, by the look of things. He pocketed the parchment as Lily sat herself up on Flitwick’s desk, holding out her hand for him to examine as he came close to her. It was starting to swell, her knuckles busted and her thumb a misshapen thing. 

“Ah,” she hissed out in pain when he took it, examining the damage. “Tell me you’re as depraved as I know you are and have mended plenty of broken bones before and this is a piece of cake for you."

“Actually, Peter is the one with the delicate touch for broken bones,” James told her apologetically, trying to not prod too painfully around her knuckles and thumb. “But I manage alright in a pinch.”

“This is a pinch,” Lily told him, and some of the adrenaline must have started to wear out, because tears were starting to pool in her pretty eyes. But maybe they were pooling with tears from more than pain, because she looked right distressed when she said, “McGonagall is gonna _ kill _ me. Head Girl! Getting in fights! Oh, _ Merlin. _”

“I’m sure Avery deserved it.”

“He did,” she nodded fervently. “But who knows what he’ll say about it to Slughorn. Oh Merlin, Slughorn! What’ll he think!” He struggled to hide the amused smirk on his face, because he found the teacher’s pet side of Lily Evans perfectly adorable. She continued, a little manic. “Even _ you _haven’t gotten detention this term.” 

“Oh, please don’t rub that in my face. You’ve been a rotten influence on me.” He reached in his robe pocket for his wand, satisfied with his examination of the damage. “Besides. Avery’s not going to rat on you. He’d never admit that a Muggleborn managed to break his nose.”

That was when he muttered _ episkey, _because sometimes it was better to just not know when it was coming. 

“Bloody hell!” Lily jumped, shaking her hand as her thumb popped itself into a much more usual shape. She flexed her hand, knuckles still busted but now mobile, thumb once more useable. Then she was smiling up at him, and James found himself smiling back down at her, too. 

“You’re _ brilliant, _James Potter, did you know that?”

“You’re the brilliant one who got punch Avery,” he said, looking down, because sometimes Lily Evans beaming up at him like that felt a little bit like looking into the sun and he usually found it too hard to look away. After he pocketed his wand, he absentmindedly reached out for her healed hand again, then bent her fingers into a proper fist, one that didn’t bury her thumb in it. “No one ever taught you how to throw a proper punch?”

She rolled her eyes at him. “No one teaches little girls how to fight like that, James.”

“Well, that changes now.” He patted her fist, looking bright eyed and determined. “You’re right quick as a whip with a wand, but you should be just as dangerous without one.”

“You’re going to teach me to brawl,” Lily said, deadpan. “This can’t end well.”

“Sure it can! In fact, to hell with patrols. Let’s teach all the Prefects how to fight like the Muggles. That’s a better use of our time.”

“You can be the one to pitch this to Dumbledore. I’m not getting tangled in this lunatic plan.”

“Lunatic?” He looked a little offended and it occurred to Lily that James wasn’t fully joking. “I think Dumbledore would think a dueling club useful in this day and age.” Then he turned over her fist in his hand again, staring down at it contemplatively. “I mean it, Lily. You shouldn’t go out there and not know how to throw a _ punch. _I’ll teach you that and more, if you’d let me.”

“Alright,” Lily heard herself agree, but it didn’t come out all casual as she had intended but low and meaningful, like in that moment she had agreed to do more than spar with James Potter. And now that her hand was healed and now that she took the time to notice, she found they were situated rather intimately. She noticed how sitting on the desk meant her knees were brushing his thighs and his possession of her hand, as unnecessary as it was, as indulgent as it was, kept their chests rather close together too. 

He must have felt it then, too, because James stopped the way he was passing her hand between his absentmindedly and rather deliberately opened her hand back up to him, palm out. 

“Just be careful with yourself, Evans. These are important hands.” he said with some significance. “They hold a big future in them.”

“I don’t care about that,” Lily said sharply. “I don’t care about the future. I don’t care about what my palms tell you.” He stills, his eyes darting from watching his fingers trace the lines of her hand again to meet her eyes. She makes it a point to soften her gaze, because in her fervor to reject every narrative that she felt had been foisted upon her in Divination, she hadn’t given enough back to him in return.

She flips her palm from facing up, ready for his reading, before she tucks it down, grabbing one hand in hers before she reaches her other out to grab his as well, intertwining her fingers through his in a messy knot of four hands in one. He was very still, waiting for her to finish, and his eyes were almost crackling with static energy he was trying to control. She heard his breath hitch, just a little. “I’m tired of dancing around this. I want to be here, in the present, with you. I don’t care about holding the future when I just want to hold _ you _. Isn’t that enough?”

“More than,” he told her, his lips working against hers. “It’s always been more than enough.”

______

Four hands at work. Two people, two hearts, two souls, one fate. 

“Merlin, Evans,” James breathed out at last, tightening the gauze around her palm extended out to him. “You’re going to be the death of me one of these days.”

Lily winced a little as the bandage tightened around the cut, feeling the medicinal balm start its work. “I thought I only had to worry about knives with Bellatrix.”

He didn’t answer. His shoulders still hold the tension they assumed the moment she threw herself into the doorway of his flat, fresh off a scuffle on Knockturn Alley where she’d been doing reconnaissance until a fist met her temple, a knife met her throat, and her wand met the ground until she was able to wrestle herself away and stun her attacker. She didn’t recognize him and didn’t stick around long enough to identify him when it meant risking herself further. She apparated to his doorstep as soon as she was able and Sirius, smart bloke he can be sometimes, made himself scarce when he noticed her bleeding onto the carpet. 

James hadn’t said much since he got out the salves she stocked the place with. All he did was obediently tend to her sporadic knife wounds, suturing them with wand or needle, whichever worked better, while she tried to stop the larger welts from forming into anything crueler than what they already looked to be. 

In the refuge of the curtains of his bed, the lights dark in his room, she can feel the presence of something else in the air, something that has always followed their story as it unfolded. She feels the significance of the moment settle into her bones, settle into her raw skin, settle into the part of her soul that’s left buzzing after she casts a patronus charm. She feels it come from him, radiating through his fingertips as he fastens the last of the gauze around and then holds her hand in his, palm up, ready to be read as he had before it all started. They sit knee to knee, foreheads nearly touching, an impenetrable aura surrounding them. 

“What do you see?” Lily whispered, her voice hanging in the air. James takes a while to answer, his thumb tracing the lines that he can access, whatever isn’t covered by his first aid work. A burn mark from Fiendfyre a few months ago blocks the end of what had been her short life line. Where her hand meets her wrist is marred from the barbed wire that Lucius Malfoy had cursed around her wrists one night. But these scars are hard to see in the soft glow of the night, as if being here with James Potter’s healing touch roving over her skin could erase the pain of the past as simply and as sweetly as that. 

She can feel his breath tickle her skin when he steadied himself. “I see the same thing I’ve seen since the first time I got to read your palm.”

“Which is?”

“My future.”

Lily felt a soft smile take over her face. Two years after they started dating and with one year of full-fledged war hardening most things around her, she could still be caught off guard by the gentle way in which he navigated love. 

The moment is tapered somewhat by the ghost of the smirk curling up on his lip, entertained by his own flirting. She gave him a soft kick with her socked foot.

“Prat,” she teased back. “You’re supposed to be reading _ my _future.”

“Well,” he paused. Whatever weight was in the air before returned in his voice, returned in the way he turned over her hand in his again, “I’m hoping they’re the same thing.”

She didn’t say anything. She didn’t need to. When James placed a final, soft kiss on her bandaged hand and picked up her left, his thumbs tracing electric lines across her skin, grazing her no-longer soft palm with tenderness, she didn’t need to speak.

“This one says the same thing,” James whispered in that same soft voice from before, like if he spoke too strongly the terrors of the night would come rushing out from the shadows. He’s still turning her hand over, fingertips tracing her life and love lines and scars and blisters and cuts and every other souvenirs this war has left her with. 

“Well,” Lily whispered between them, the sound filtering through the air like billowing smoke. “I think you should look a little harder, then. Something isn't right.”

“Oh?”

“It’s just that I think it’s missing something.” 

She felt his hands still, felt his body tense in suspension as his eyes traced her body up until they met hers, shining back softly at him in the dim light. 

They’d had this conversation before. The first time she brought it up, he told her she deserved something more than a hushed event hidden from the eyes of the world. Besides, they were together regardless, and they were happy just to exist in his flat with the boys. 

His parents died the next week, one after the other. Benji Fenwick the week after. The McKinnon’s the next. 

He brought it up then, and she told him she didn’t want to do it just because they felt like a wand was always pointing at their chests, ready to blow.

But now feels right. Now feels like the future is short and that acknowledging that isn’t surrendering— it’s living. 

“Something like what?” James asks, wanting for her to confirm. She could practically feel him radiating with an impatience and eagerness he didn’t want to reveal to her, some part of him still scared that moving too fast would have her running like a deer in headlights. 

“A ring,” Lily’s smile is soft, inviting him in. His is wide, welcoming her home. Her next words build its foundation. 

"Marry me, James Potter.”

A ring isn’t missing for long. In fact, James Potter only releases her hand long enough to dig into his trouser pocket and produce one, an engagement ring with diamonds glittering as brightly as dying stars, at once both old and young, optimistically and stupidly hopeful in spite of it all. 

The ring’s on her finger and his lips are on hers, smiling into each of his kisses like a fumbling boy in love, and his hands which hold their future together cup her cheeks reverently at the altar of the oracle. Omens of ill will and predictions of death don’t matter to her then, and never really mattered to her anyway, because the man in front of her has done nothing but bleed to make sure that the people he loves have futures more than what they bargained for. He transformed a lonely werewolf into a trusted friend, gave a rebel both a cause and a home, and believed in an ordinary boy enough to see him become one of the sweetest, truest people she knows. 

It’s in that moment that Lily Evans, soon to be Potter, decides that she’s never going to let herself be bothered by any prophecy or divination again. The future is theirs for the taking, long and winding, uncontrollable and utterly, utterly unknowable.

**Author's Note:**

> hey i finished writing this fic and then realized a prophecy ruins james and lily's lives and im not having a good time about it
> 
> i also did ZERO research into palm reading and other divination because this was NOT supposed to be as long as it ended up being


End file.
